By Riham Alkousaa
ALTENA, Germany (Reuters) -A decade in the past, as Germany was grappling with an inflow of greater than 1,000,000 migrants, the small city of Altena noticed a chance to reverse years of inhabitants and financial decline.
The commercial city in Western Germany made nationwide headlines in 2015 when it volunteered to soak up 100 extra migrants than required, changing into a mannequin of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pledge: “Wir schaffen das” – “We are able to do that.”
However whereas there have been advantages for either side, three present and former city officers informed Reuters migration wasn’t a panacea.
With the assistance of residents who mobilized to help the newcomers, many discovered properties and began contributing to the native financial system, they informed Reuters. However some moved on to greater cities, which supply extra work and training alternatives.
Others struggled to beat language and cultural limitations, including to rising welfare prices in a city with an growing older inhabitants, officers stated.
Now some native residents complain that the variety of refugees and asylum seekers is getting too excessive. Latest election outcomes present rising help for the anti-immigration Different for Germany (AfD) celebration, fuelled by frustration over rising residing prices, strained public funds and crumbling infrastructure.
“The glass is half full and half empty,” stated Thomas Liebig, a migration researcher who contributed to an Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Improvement (OECD) report in 2018 on Altena’s efforts to combine refugees. “Many refugees discovered jobs, however social cohesion nonetheless lags behind.”
WARM WELCOME
Nestled amid scenic wooded hills, Altena has been an industrial hub because the center ages.
The riverside city describes itself because the birthplace of wire manufacturing. However native ironworks struggled to remain aggressive in current many years, wiping out a 3rd of its jobs, the previous mayor, Andreas Hollstein, informed Reuters. Solely the closely automated metal wire sector survived.
By 2015, Altena was one of many quickest dwindling cities in western Germany with a inhabitants of round 17,000, simply over half what it was within the Nineteen Seventies, in line with the World Financial institution.
The lowered tax base harm the city’s funds, making it troublesome to maintain primary facilities open, officers stated. Colleges closed as a result of there weren’t sufficient college students to fill the lecture rooms.
When Hollstein advised taking in additional refugees and asylum seekers than the city’s allotment of 270 in 2015, there was broad help from native council members.
“Taking in households meant we may fill empty housing, reopen school rooms and convey new life to the city,” stated Anette Wesemann, Altena’s integration commissioner. “It was a win-win.”
The city had already absorbed waves of migrant staff, together with Italians and Turks recruited within the Nineteen Sixties to employees its factories. So locals had been accustomed to residing alongside neighbours with completely different cultures and languages, Hollstein stated.
Every refugee household or particular person was paired with a neighborhood “kuemmerer”, or caregiver, to indicate them the ropes. Many residents volunteered to assist, elevating donations for care packages, furnishing properties for the brand new arrivals, accompanying them to medical appointments and serving to with paperwork.
Leveraging the excessive emptiness fee, the city positioned newcomers in flats reasonably than a shelter. This helped combine them into neighbourhoods, the OECD report stated.
“For the kids, we put dolls there,” recalled Dorothee Isenbeck, 81, one of many authentic volunteers. “There was a gaggle of aged males who adorned the flats so fantastically, in order that they felt they had been welcome.”
Knowledge on this system is sketchy. Officers stated they didn’t observe what number of migrants have come since 2015 or how they faired.
However by 2024, roughly half of the 100 extra arrivals that yr had been nonetheless residing in Altena, Wesemann stated. A lot of the relaxation had moved to greater cities, whereas a number of Iraqis determined to return house, she stated.
Amongst those that stayed is Humam al-Gburi, a 34-year-old Iraqi refugee who arrived by bus in October 2015. He stated he had no thought what to anticipate, however the heat welcome eased his fears.
Lasting bonds had been solid by way of the city’s integration program. A translator launched him to Ursula Panke, an 85-year-old retired nurse he refers to as his “omi”, or grandmother.
Their friendship started when Gburi helped her arrange an artwork exhibition. “He hung every part so exactly, so fastidiously,” she recalled, smiling.
She turned a mentor, encouraging him to attempt completely different vocational programs till he discovered his calling. He now works as a nurse himself at a close-by orthopaedics and trauma clinic.
“In a giant metropolis, you are only a quantity. Right here, folks know me. Uschi is my household,” Gburi stated, utilizing Panke’s nickname. “Household doesn’t suggest blood — it is the individuals who hear, who assist, who stand by you.”
AfD’s RISE
Not everybody was so welcoming. Shortly after the primary arrivals in 2015, a neighborhood firefighter set a constructing housing refugees on fireplace. Nobody was harm within the arson assault.
Two years later, mayor Hollstein survived a knife assault by a person who cited his refugee coverage because the motive.
With extra migrants arriving yearly, the temper amongst some residents began to bitter.
“Hardly any German is spoken anymore. It is all foreigners right here,” Hannelore Wendler stated exterior a grocery retailer. “I’ve nothing towards foreigners; they’re all folks. Nevertheless it’s an excessive amount of.”
Anger over Merkel’s open-door coverage towards migrants, lots of them fleeing struggle and poverty within the Center East and Africa, helped propel the rise of the AfD, which is now the nation’s major opposition celebration.
Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the place Altena is positioned, is much less conservative than jap areas. However the AfD has been making inroads within the state’s small cities and rural areas, stated Manfred Guellner, who heads the Forsa Institute for Social Analysis and Statistical Evaluation, a number one German polling firm.
Migration is just not the primary concern in NRW, he stated, however reasonably rising inflation, job losses within the auto trade and a way of financial decline.
“Solely about half of AfD supporters even imagine the celebration may govern higher. Individuals vote for it out of frustration with the others,” Guellner stated.
The celebration received almost 24% of the vote in Altena throughout February’s federal election, up from round 10% in 2017 and 2021.
“Altena is a major instance of failed integration and failed politics,” stated Klaus Laatsch, the AfD parliamentary group chief within the Maerkischer Kreis district council, which incorporates Altena.
“Throughout us … it is going downhill,” he stated, citing rising vitality prices, shuttered companies, trash-strewn streets and insufficient transportation companies. “Residents expertise these issues on daily basis, they usually see that previous guarantees had been by no means fulfilled.”
Nonetheless, the celebration has little seen presence in Altena. It has no workplace and isn’t fielding candidates within the city for the state’s municipal elections on Sept. 14.
Altena’s contributions towards the assimilation of refugees in Germany had been recognised in 2017 with an award from the federal authorities.
However the inhabitants has continued to say no. By the top of 2024, there have been simply over 16,600 residents, 4% lower than in 2015, in line with figures from the state statistics workplace.
The city’s funds improved, although Hollstein stated that had extra to do with spending cuts, tax will increase and a rebound in native metal processing than the comparatively small variety of migrants who selected to stay.
However whilst some depart, others proceed to reach, officers stated.
They’re drawn by the city’s reasonably priced housing and welcoming repute, stated a Syrian grocery store proprietor and two of her prospects, who didn’t need their names printed for concern of drawing undesirable consideration.
After years of effort, some early volunteers at the moment are stepping again, and discovering replacements is changing into more durable, Hollstein stated.
However the city stays comparatively unchanged, he stated. “That is optimistic. The newcomers reside amongst us; their youngsters are at school; life goes on.”
Wanting again, he stays satisfied that Merkel was proper.
“We are able to do that,” he stated. “However critics are proper too — Germany can’t soak up these numbers indefinitely.”
(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Enhancing by Alexandra Zavis)
